


it absolutely, positively has to be there

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Flirting, Banter, Delivery Man Patrick, First Meetings, M/M, Meet-Cute, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22283560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: “Can I help you?” His voice is a little like butter, a little like pop-rocks, a mixture of comfort and surprised humor and it’s a nice voice, like the nice handwriting. David can’t seem to connect his mouth to his brain.“Store? Sorry, I’m the store? I mean, the store is mine? I —” he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, scrunching his hands into little fists. “I’m David Rose, I own Rose Apothecary.”The name seems to jog his memory, because Delivery Guy smiles, a for-real bending of his mouth that looks so much like the grin emoji that David’s wondering if he’s talking to some kind of cartoon. “Ah, I’ve been wondering if you guys were actually open.”
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 21
Kudos: 221





	it absolutely, positively has to be there

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storieswelove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieswelove/gifts).



> For the beautiful stories, who didn't exactly ask for this but who I hope loves it anyway.
> 
> All my gratitude to the incomparable [hullomoon](http://hullomoon.tumblr.com) for the beta help!

David Rose is no stranger to feeling foolish. You didn’t roll through as many beds, as many prescriptions, as many impeccably planned White Parties, and not become intimate with the feeling. But, amongst his history of frippery and folly, he’s never felt quite so ridiculous as he does forming a crush on handwriting. 

But it’s nice handwriting. The letters are wide and evenly spaced, mostly print with the occasional cursive joining between certain letters — the ‘e’ and ‘s’ and ‘y’ — like the writer tried their best to keep everything neat and orderly but just couldn’t quite corral those last few letters. David can see the little dots of ink where the ballpoint pen first hit the paper, but otherwise, the strokes are sure, and steady, and his fingers itch to trace the way they imprint into the thin carbon paper. Which should be weird, but isn’t, because he used to get the same feeling in his art history classes, wanting to reach through the textbook to run his hands over some of the world’s greatest works of art. And he doesn’t know that the top sheet of a “We Missed You” notification from FedEx can be classed in the same category as  _ La Columna Rota _ , but still. It’s nice handwriting. 

He plucks his third missed delivery notification off the door and sighs heavily. He’s not sure how many more times he can miss the delivery before they just send his new display bottles back from whence they came, but he’s been here a half hour earlier for the last three mornings and he  _ still  _ missed the delivery. He’s beginning to wonder how early deliveries are legally allowed to happen. 

He opens the store and spends the rest of the morning dusting shelves he’s already dusted, arranging product he’d faced out the night before, and building the perfect Café Tropical lunch order. Eventually, 11:00 am strikes, he’s sold exactly one tube of lip balm, and he desperately needs a coffee. So he locks the door behind him and walks quickly across the street to the Café. 

And of course, because the universe hates him, he’s got another “We Missed You” form sitting in the center of the door when he exits – he can see the white square of paper from across the street. Luckily, because maybe the universe only half hates him, he can also see the back of a vaguely familiar purple and black uniform, so David Rose does something he never does — he runs. 

It’s more of a tepid jog, but he picks up his pace as he crosses the street, going right past the front of the store and calling out an, “excuse me!” as loudly as he can before the mystery delivery man turns the corner.

What he’s not prepared for is the way the other man’s gaze stops him in his tracks. He’s got these warm, brown eyes, more like walnut than mahogany, and his close-cropped curls are that borderline color that’s so dark red it’s brown again unless the light hits it just right. He’s colored pencils and hours of subtle shading, and David knows he’d have to spend days capturing the angle of that mouth as it ticks up at the corner, the smallest flame of a smile. David wants to cup it in his hands and fan it into a flame.

“Can I help you?” His voice is a little like butter, a little like pop-rocks, a mixture of comfort and surprised humor and it’s a nice voice, like the nice handwriting. David can’t seem to connect his mouth to his brain.

“Store? Sorry, I’m the store? I mean, the store is mine? I —” he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, scrunching his hands into little fists. “I’m David Rose, I own Rose Apothecary.”

The name seems to jog his memory, because Delivery Guy smiles, a for-real bending of his mouth that looks so much like the grin emoji that David’s wondering if he’s talking to some kind of cartoon. “Ah, I’ve been wondering if you guys were actually open.”

“Our store hours are posted on the door.”

“That’s odd. Because according to this,” he waves a clunky black handheld in David’s direction, “I’ve been by the last three days at about fifteen after the posted opening hours, and yet.” His eyebrows raise and his mouth slants sideways, his shoulders shrugging. David wants to plant his hands on those shoulders, wants to feel the little dozens of muscles coordinated in the effort to make that one adorable movement happen. It’s unsettling how badly he wants it, wants to press into this stranger’s space and kiss the smirk right off of him, borrow it for a minute to wear, to slip into like a suit of quick humor and easy disposition. 

“Well, you know,” David waves his hand, still distracted. He’s having a hard time hearing his thoughts in his head over the volume of Delivery Guy’s eyes. “It’s a more unconventional pop-up model; unpredictability leads to buzz, which can generate great traffic.”

“Love the buzzwords there, David. But I do actually need you to be there to deliver your package.” And David is imagining it, he’s adding the subtle shift of inflection to Delivery Guy saying ‘package’ like he’s thirteen and making a dick joke.

“I appreciate you looking out for my package,” David replies, and swallows thickly. “Which is a thing I just said to you…”

“Patrick,” he forces out through a round of loud, full laugher that brings champagne bubbles to the space underneath David’s collarbone. His chest feels tight and he’s going to kill Alexis if she put his sweater through the dryer again. 

“Well, Patrick. I’m here now, any chance I can get you to go ahead and finally drop off all that mail?”

“Absolutely. At the end of my shift. Should be about 5:00.”

“We close at 5:00 on Fridays.”

“Aw, see, I’m doing more of a pop-up style delivery? Really keeps the customers guessing when they’ll get their mail, builds a lot of buzz.”

He smiles at David, and David smiles back, a quick flash across his face that he coughs through and pretends never happened.

“Fine. Just. Don’t break my display bottles in the mean time,” David says, tossing his head back and trying to swallow down the next smile that’s threatening to destroy his face.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” And then he’s gone with a little wink, or an attempt at a wink that makes those champagne bubbles pop, one after the other, little buzzes of anticipatory joy that make David feel wired. 

He heads back to the store and tries to focus on doing something,  _ anything _ , besides just staring at the clock and waiting for 5:00 to come. He helps one group of teens talk through the wide variety of toner products they sell, before they split a pack of gum between them and head out, and there’s a middle-aged woman who wants help deciding which of the cat hair scarves looks best with her haircut, but otherwise, it’s a long, boring day in which David logs dozens of laps just wandering around the little shop space.

He’s leaning on the counter, doodling in the corner of the ledger book he bought to log receipts before he remembered he’d be doing it all on stupid Excel, when the bell rings and his eyes are drawn to Patrick like a compass to magnetic north.  _ Compass Rose  _ David’s brain unhelpfully supplies. “We’re closed,” David says.

“Look again,” Patrick says. And sure enough, it’s 4:58 and David is an idiot but Patrick is two minutes early. “I figured it probably wasn’t fair to keep you waiting. I know it’s been a couple of days.”

“I’m glad you came to that very reasonable decision. The bath salts aren’t going to rebottle themselves.” He waves towards the far wall, where his current display is slowly driving him nuts. Which is why he ordered the bottles for a new one. Patrick follows his hand, but also takes in the table, spread with product, and the window shelves carrying a whole variety of greenery. 

“You’ve got a nice shop here, David.”

“Thank you.” He presses his lips together so he doesn’t make a joke or explain the compliment away. He’s worked really hard, and he’s trying really hard to not shit all over it this time. 

Patrick catches his eye and he’s smiling as big as he can with his lips still folded over his teeth. His eyes are sparkling. “I’m just so glad I managed to catch you during one of your avant-garde hours of operation.”

David rolls his eyes and makes a scoffing sound, but meets Patrick’s eyes again after all of that and feels something warm and liquid pooling in his knees. Patrick won’t stop looking at his face, like he’s reading David like a book, a page-turner her can’t put down. 

He’s looking, so David takes the chance to do the same. He takes in the broad chest underneath the cheap purple and black poly-cotton blend, the way his short, broad fingers wrap around the clunky black scanner in his hand. His ankles are clad in black socks and thick leather hiking boots, but the expanse of skin between the hem of his shorts and the start of his socks is oddly erotic. David isn’t really a ‘shorts’ person, being far favorable to the culotte and drop-crotch, but. Well. He can most definitely make an exception for the uniform. Especially when Patrick turns with the excuse of grabbing the boxes from his truck and David is made privy to the exact way that the stretch-blend of the Fedex uniform looks stretched over the borderline obscene ass Patrick possesses. He’s a little irritated at himself for not noticing it earlier if he’s being honest, but he blames the entirety of Patrick’s face for that. 

David thinks about offering to help. He really, really does. But the boxes are, like, so heavy and Patrick has that little dolly thing, so David just stays behind the counter and watches. There’s a way that Patrick’s forearms flex when sets the dolly down on the floor that David thinks should have songs written about it, a certain rippling of his shoulders when he wraps his arms around the boxes that David wants to see chiaroscuro in oil pastels. He’s busy imagining what Patrick would look like sketched in the soft lines of charcoal when he takes the last box off the dolly and wipes his hands on the front of his shorts, turning to face David.

“That’s the last of them!”

“Thank you so much, Patrick.”

“You’re very welcome, David.” Patrick shoves his hands in his pockets and David’s a little surprised to see they both fit in the spare bits of fabric, but he also doesn’t mind the excuse to look at Patricks, um, pockets. And while nothing about any of this should work for David, it most definitely is.

“So, um. I guess — good delivering tomorrow?”

Patrick cocks his head to the left and stares at David. “Good delivering?”

“Well I don’t know! What do you say to your mailman?"

“Delivery person, David, please.”

“Ugh,” David puts his face into both palms, pressing into his temples, which for some reason just makes Patrick laugh harder.

“I’ll see you around, David Rose. Don’t hurt yourself moving those boxes, okay? They’re not light.” And of all the things they’ve said to each other today, these have been the first delivered with a complete sense of sincerity. It swipes at something in David, the easy way Patrick slips in between cutting humor and an almost overwhelming earnestness. It makes his skin itch in a way that’s not  _ unpleasant,  _ and he tries not to think too much into a cute man telling himself to take care of himself.

“Yeah, no, of course. They’ll probably just sit there until I can convince someone else to come move them for me.”

“Naturally. I mean, I could just do it for you…”

“No, really. It’s fine. It’s getting late, I’m sure you’ve got to get home to...your home.” It’s the lamest feel-out for a significant other David has ever done, and he grimaces at himself.

“My...home. Yeah. Okay, well then I’ll tell you what. I can swing by tomorrow and do it.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Of course I don’t. I’m sure you’ll just sell merchandise  _ around  _ the giant pile of boxes in the middle of the floor. Really, David, I don’t mind. I’m up early anyway.”

And he’s being so serious, and so sincere, and David can’t deny that the thought of seeing him again, doing more of this back and forth, squeezes uncomfortably at his ribcage. So he shouts down all the stupid voices in his head and musters up the smallest, “Okay.”

“Okay.” Patrick beams at him, his smile wide and unguarded and so damn bright David has to look away way before he’s ready. “See you in the morning, then.”

“Whenever you’d like, Patrick.”

“Oh, the posted opening time should be perfect,” and then he winks at David — twice in one day, what rakish 18th century novel did this guy fall out of — before walking out the door and pulling it shut quietly behind him. 

David spends the rest of the night wrapped in a thin layer of cotton, a cocoon of joy and excitement and the precious little thing the world has decided to name ‘hope’.

*

Patrick is there the next morning when David gets there, his uniform still smelling vaguely of dryer sheets. Or maybe that’s just Patrick, all fresh air and clean cotton, kept promises and eyes that are tracking David every time he looks up to meet them.

It only takes Patrick fifteen minutes to reload the dolly and rearrange the boxes in the back of the storage room — “just so you know, you can usually tell delivery people  _ where  _ you want them to put something the first time” — but he offers to help David move some of the other supply containers so that the room is, in his words, more space efficient. The moving of the boxes, however, reveals a patch of wall stained at the top by an old water leak, and Patrick manages to find a matching can of paint tucked under a tarp in the corner, next to the newly moved display bottles. 

“You really don’t have to do, like. Any of this. Aren’t you, like, a mailman —” Patrick cuts him a glare — “ _ delivery person _ , anyway?”

“Yes, I am, but it’s my day off.”

“You spend your day off in your uniform, too? Oh my God, are you and Fedex actually The Borg or something?”

“How the hell do you know Star Trek?!”

“I dated Wil Wheaton once and I don’t want to talk about it.” 

Patrick stares at him, paintbrush in one hand, mouth hanging open and — there’s that damn cartoon face again. It makes David laugh, a sincere little giggle that rings like bells and does a weird, mercurial melting thing to the way Patrick is looking at him. His eyes go impossibly softer at the edges, and he snaps his mouth shut. “That’s a story I’d love to hear.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t, actually. I’ve got better ones.”

“I’m sure you do."

There’s an energy buzzing between them that makes David feel he’s spinning, like he’s got his arms out and the world around him is holding infuriatingly still. He crosses to Patrick and takes the paint can out of his hands harder than he probably needs to. “Really, Patrick. None of this is your job. I’ve got it handled. Go deliver the packages the company is paying you to deliver.”

“Are you sure? It wouldn’t take long to-” 

“You don’t work here!” David doesn’t mean to yell, but Patrick won’t stop being nice, and it’s a niceness that’s starting to feel unweighted and he doesn’t like it. “Even if you did, I couldn’t pay you, so. You don’t. Please, just. Go do your job.”

Patrick’s jaw clenches but he automatically takes a step back from David. “Yeah. Absolutely. You’re right, David, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to — I was just trying to help.”

David’s stomach sinks. “I know that. And I’m super appreciative, it’s just —”

Patrick holds up a hand to stop him, but his face is gentle. “You really don’t need to explain, David. I’m glad I was able to help get those boxes moved, I’ll just get out of your hair.”

And then he’s gone. He’s gone, and David is left standing in the back room, can of paint in hand, the smell of cotton and kindness hanging in the air all around him. 

*

Business as usual resumes, just like it was always going to, and David spends the rest of the week trying to figure out how two interactions, both lasting less than an hour, had somehow made him feel more unsettled than the entirety of his social life the last six months. It should say something about David, that he misses a smile he’s only seen half a dozen times; that he daydreams through his lunch break two days in a row trying to imagine the retorts Patrick would dream up for various customers that trickle through the front door. He spends his nights rearranging his store in a million different, little permutations and trying to forget the way Patrick’s eyes had been a different color in the dim purple of dusk than they had been in the dusty blue of early morning. 

By Monday, he’s going a little crazy with it, with his brain and his body and his apparent inability to just erase the memories of Patrick, or at least dial them back to a normal, rational human response level. He’s worried he’s going to get whiplash, he looks up so fast every time the bell rings, his heart hoping it’s Patrick before his mind can remind him that’s just this shy of completely insane. 

Until the day he looks up, and it is Patrick.

“Patrick!” He tries to ignore how much he likes the way the name feels in his mouth. 

“Hello, David Rose.” He’s standing inside the store, his back pressed against the glass-paned door, a roll of papers clenched tightly in his hand. He’s drumming it gently against his palm and there’s a nervous energy around him that actually makes David feel calmer. Like there’s only space for so many nerves between them, and Patrick is consuming most of them this time. 

“What can I help you with?”

Patrick takes a deep breath and seems to set his shoulders before he takes a few solid, resolute steps towards the counter. “I need a job.”

“Oh.” And David’s not sure what he thought Patrick was going to say, but that most definitely wasn’t it. “We’re not hiring.”

“I know.”

Patrick takes the roll of papers in his hand and unfurls them on the desk top. They immediately curl back up, and the next minute is spent doing a prop comedy routine trying to get them to stay unfolded. Finally, between the stapler and edge of the keyboard, they manage. Not that it matters, because David still has no idea what he’s looking at. 

“And this is…”

“The money you need to hire me.” Patrick is blushing so deeply, it starts below the neckline of his denim blue button-up. David has to force himself to look away from the peaches-and-cream mottling his skin does, the way David wants to put his palm across the broad base of Patrick’s neck to see if he can feel the heat coming off of him. He forces his eyes down to the printed sheets, the font tiny and the words unnecessarily long. It’s a lot of business jargon, but David is able to pick apart enough of this.

“This is...a grant? For local businesses?”

“Yep.”

“The delivery man wants to get me a grant for my local business?” He’s trying not to sound condescending, but doesn’t think it’s working. 

“I’m not just — you know people aren’t, like. Born delivery people, right? I’m in business school and the early morning hours on the truck are good for my schedule.” 

It’s David’s turn to blush, and he chews on the corner of his lip and looks at the papers on the desk again, running his palms over them until he’s sure he can speak without his voice shaking. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t have made a snap judgment.”

“I’m sure it’s not the worst one you’ve ever made.”

“So how, what — what exactly is happening here?”

Patrick chuckles and flips the paper around, turning to the last page and pointing to a line with a bunch of numbers, a pie chart and future dates listed. “This grant money will allow you to hire some extra help around the store, which you need, and be able to pay them. Which I’ll need.”

“Because I’m going to hire you.”

A grin, bigger and brighter than David had remembered it being. “Yes. You are.” And David has never been less sure of anything in his life, except maybe the day he soft launched Rose Apothecary. There’s a stranger in his store — because he’s accepted by now that whatever else he thinks Patrick might be, he’s still effectively a stranger — demanding David hire him for a position that doesn’t exist. And every fiber of David’s body is screaming at him to do it.

“Yes. I am.”

Heat flares in Patrick’s eyes. “You won’t be sorry about this, David Rose.”

And David doesn’t believe in fate. Doesn’t believe in prophecies, barely believes in promises anymore. But he believes in Patrick. Believes he’s never heard a more true sentence. “You’re sure about this?”

“Easiest decision of my life.” And David believes that, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from the FedEx slogan. Because of course.


End file.
